Somebody wants to "get into" jazz, but knows absoloutely NOTHING about it. What would you send them to get?

Me:
Miles Davis - Kind Of Blue

It's melodic, inventive and accessible. The perfect starting point for "modern" jazz, IMO.

Coltrane - Blue Train actually resonated with me more when I first got into jazz. I know alot of people were introduced to Jazz through Bitches Brew.

Thelonious Monk - Straight, No Chaser

One of my all time favorites in that cool jazz style of Kind Of Blue is the one Miles cut right before that with Cannonball Adderley called Somethin' Else. Great album. Ditto on the Coltrane Blue Train and Love Supreme. Not that big a fan of Bitches Brew from the late days, but always loved In A Silent Way from that same period. The Blues and the Abstract Truth is another big favorite of mine from a couple years later. 1961. Oliver Nelson, alto & tenor sax; Eric Dolphy, alto sax, flute; George Barrow, baritone sax; Freddie Hubbard, trumpet; Bill Evans, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Roy Haynes, drums. Some great tunes and fantastic playing. A real classic. It's bluesy and it's got some great dynamics and will make you smile. And also the two Bill Evans albums at the Village Vanguard. Essential stuff. All 5 stars. So many great great jazz records from that time period.

The first three jazz records that I bought on my own (i think I must have gotten them through BMG or Columbia House):

Best of Miles Davis - The Blue Note Years
Best Of Charlie Parker
Thelonius Monk featuring John Coltrane Live at the Five Spot

the first two were an especially nice little introduction.

The Birth of Cool is like Jazz 101.

Somethin' Else and Blue Train are both great, but I'd still recommend Kind of Blue. It does also happen to be my favorite jazz album, but I think there's a reason so many people recommend that as a jazz starter. It's also where I started.

Other good entry points (I would think):

Mingus - Mingus Ah Um
Sonny Rollins - Saxophone Colossus
Coltrane - Giant Steps
Sun Ra - Heliocentric Worlds Vol. 1

i agree

i was going to suggest sun ra in general. that man was decades ahead of his time. it's amusing enough that even if you're bored with jazz (which i almost always am), it still keeps your attention.

agreed, red. I used to get bored by a lot of jazz but I don't know, something changed (and it hasn't bored me for a while) but when I felt that way Sun Ra could always keep my attention. I could leave my albums of his on repeat for hours.

The first Sun Ra album I had ever heard was Mayan Temples. It's a great album, too.

Dave Brubeck - Time Out

That's what did it for me.

Kind of Blue bores me to tears.

The only other jazz album I own so far is Mingus Ah Um, which is pretty awesome.

Lonnie Liston Smith - Expansions



A combination of funk, jazz and some psychedelia, Expansions shares a time in place with such artists as Herbie Hancock, Joe Henderson, Herbie Mann, and Freddie Hubbard just to name a few. The music on Expansions is timeless soul-jazz, perfect in every era. Of all the fusion records of this type released in the mid-'70s, Expansions provided smoother jazzers and electronica's sampling wizards with more material that Smith could ever have anticipated.

Essential.

I've always thought Kind of Blue was pretty boring, but I haven't listened to it in a long time, either. My mind could have changed.

Mingus Dynasty is my favorite Charles Mingus album sofar. I like Mingus Ah Um a whole lot as well.

This looks really interesting, Dalen. I'm going to try to find it on soulseek right now.

This why its hard to just recommend Jazz starters for people. Its really no different than trying to recommend rock albums without knowing people's general taste.

I don't think Sun Ra is a safe starter for most people, but is exactly the right starter for others. I think Miles and Coltrane are far too often recommended. They are indeed Giants, but I can understand how lots of people would find them boring.

I think anyone who likes jazz needs to hear Miles and Coltrane, but a general entry point into jazz should be more personalized based on stuff an individual would be most inclined to like.

I like Sun Ra's Jazz in Sihouette, but all other stuff I've heard from him fades to the background.

A good place to start as well (well for me at least) was to listen to a jazz program on the radio, and then figure out what it is that you like. And shit, with the internet and all, its even easier than it was then when I had to figure out when these programs were coming on.

Yeah, that sounds fun. Do you know the Afro-jazz-funk of Fela Anikulapo Kuti? He died of AIDS complications in the late 90s but left quite a legacy. There's a 2-disc set called The Best Best of Fela Kuti that is very cool, although mastered a bit hot unfortunately.

If you count the two-fer reissue album pairings as two albums than I own 24 Fela albums which is easily more than I own by anyone else. I think its a stretch to call all but his earliest work jazz though.

Yeah, some of the music is almost pure 70s type funk. I was mainly just following Dalen's tangent, not a newbie rec, but it is really cool. So where should I be looking for another taste that isn't so highly compressed as the 2000 Universal remastering? Are the older CDs decent sounding? It's kind of irritating when they take some nice and natural sounding older music like that and compress the crap out of it to make it sound modern.

I'm a pretty big jazz fan and I really don't care about KoB. It's just not my kind of thing. The mid-60s is where my jazz starts and prior to that it's very hit and miss, mostly miss. I really prefer the edge between "songs" and "jazz exploration," if that makes sense. What I'm referring to is the stuff Coltrane was creating around the period of A Love Supreme or that Miles was doing with his second quintet from 65-68. That's a style that is still being worked on by the new breed of hungry, viciously talented jazz artists like Matthew Shipp and Dave Douglas. This is the jazz that I find most vital and invigorating.

And, really, for a true newbie to jazz, I'd start them off with some Medeski, Martin, & Wood and Charlie Hunter. A seriously talented bunch of guys who make really inviting jazz-based groove stuff. It's a good jumping-off point for people because there's a number of directions you can go from their music because of how much stuff they are into that weaves its way into their music.

Charles Mingus - Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus [Impulse!]

I would also recommend Sonny Rollins- Way Out West. I think he gets overshadowed by the giants of the time, but the man is a sweet tenor player all the same.

Also maybe a little Grant Green?

just about everything here

http://www.bluenote.com/rvg_promo.asp

is great